Camera+ in Review – Replacing your iPhone Camera App

Camera+ v2.0, released in December 2010, is the top selling iPhone photo app for a reason. Developer tap tap tap has built a fantastic app that is well designed with some easy to use workflow that enhances the user’s i-photography experience. The highest praise I can give Camera+ is that it has become my go to app for taking pictures.

The basic functionality of the app allows the user to take a photo, either directly via the app or from the Photo library, and edit it in 50+ different ways. The editing options are defined across 5 different categories.

Even with all of these editing functions, one of my favorite features is the ability to process the photo in the background while opening up the camera for the next shot. As with anyone with young children will tell you, using the iPhone camera can often be frustrating when attempting to capture several quick shots of those impromptu moments. This one feature alone would have been enough to justify the price tag. A second great feature is the “save all” button that will take all of the photos in Camera+ and save them to your photo library for export to iPhoto the next time you you sync to your computer.

My favorite editing category is Scenes, which contains effects such as adding Flash, Shade, and Sunset. There are a total of 15 effects to choose from and they are perfect for improving the quality of your photos when you don’t have perfect lighting conditions. I’ve found that using the Portrait and Sunset effects will add richness and warmth to my photos and this combo is one I rely on more often than not.

The Adjust function will not only rotate the photo but will also flip the image both horizontally and vertically. Personally, I didn’t find much use for it, but I’m sure there are users out there who’ll appreciate having this ability at their finger tips.

The Crop category will give you the opportunity to crop your pictures using either a free form approach or using the Camera+ default crop types. This is great for when you want to either cut out something from a photo or prepare your photo to print. For example, we print lots of 4×6 photos and Camera+ can crop your photo to this size automatically. This certainly makes the workflow much easier for printing purposes.

FX Effects adds special effects to your photos – sort of like Hipstamatic – and offers 36 different options. This includes the I ♥ Analog FX Pack ($0.99 in-app purchase) that features 9 filmic FXs, giving your photos more retro flair. iPhone users who love and are accustomed to Hipstamatic can get some similar effects here (without the tiny view finder that Hipstamatic uses).

The Borders category offers 18 different types of frames that can be applied to your pictures. I’ve not used this feature a ton but it would be useful for when you want to print a photo with various border effects.

All of the features that I’ve described above can also be combined together. For example, the above photo with the Film border has the Sunset Scene effect and has been cropped to a wide angle 16×9 image.

Camera+ 2.1 isn’t just another photography app with a bunch of random features thrown in; it is truly a wonderful photo workflow app that can be used to take photos, edit photos, and share your work with friends and family. It is extremely well executed and should be on the first page of every iPhone, which is the biggest complement I can pay to this app. Also, if you’re an app developer (or an aspiring one), the tap tap tap blog is AWESOME – they are open with their lessons learned and are very transparent about their business.